


Turns out my flatmate isn't quite sane

by Johnlocked1895



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: BBC Sherlock - Freeform, Fem!John - Freeform, Gen, John - Freeform, Johnlock - Freeform, Mike Stamford - Freeform, Sherlock - Freeform, Sherlock Holmes - Freeform, Short, Tumblr Prompts, because john realises from the start that sherlock isn't quite sane, past John Watson/ Greg Lestrade, what if their meeting had been a bit different
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2019-01-04 19:41:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12175371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Johnlocked1895/pseuds/Johnlocked1895
Summary: So I was going through my old tumblr posts and came across this edit titled: “Turns out my flatmate is f***king crazy”, and got this urge to write Sherlock and John’s meeting but with John realising Sherlock’s more than a bit of an oddball before they move in together.





	1. Meeting OAKLaM

Okay, so maybe it wasn't the smartest choice in the history of smart choices to consider moving in with a complete stranger, but in my defence, I was skint. Like, really skint. Because not even being a retired soldier invalided home from Afghanistan makes you exempt from being evicted from the teeny little flat your liaison officer finds you on the outskirts of London, apparently.

And I may or may not have been thinking entirely rationally when I met the aforementioned stranger for the first time in a hospital’s lab and he told me that he’d left his riding crop in the morgue.

And maybe ignoring my self-preservation instincts and letting the fact that my initial impression of Sherlock Holmes being kind of fit (in a gangly, scientist sort of way) have any bearing whatsoever on my decision was also not the smartest decision in the history of the human race.

But before the warning bells started to ring, I hadn’t really minded that Mike (Stamford. We were at Bart’s together. He thinks I didn’t recognise him in the park because he got fat) was going to try and get me a flat share with somebody who’d also believed themselves impossible to find a flatmate for. I wasn't completely against the idea of having someone help out with rent, and if that meant living with a friend of a friend, I could have survived. I had, after all, just come back from the army, where I'd lived under the same canvas roof as some of the shittiest roommates on the planet. And before that, there had been university, with its student accommodation. And I'd reasoned that surely anyone Mike could have found for me as a potential neighbour couldn't have been as bad as those weed-smoking caffeine addicts who didn't know their coccyx's from their phalanges.

Then I got to the hospital and met Mike's candidate.

And Sherlock asked to borrow Mike’s phone and I offered him mine, completely oblivious to what was about to come.

He came over and took it anyway, despite being surprised that I was being so generous, and said three words: “Afghanistan or Iraq?”

Mike introduced me at that point, while I was standing there doing what I realise in hindsight must’ve been an accurate impression of a fish out of water. 

Minus the dying and flapping around on the floor, of course.

But Smuglock Holmes didn’t care that I was a woman called John Watson, and asked me again if it was Afghanistan or Iraq.

For some reason unbeknown to me, I told him it had been Afghanistan, but before I could ask him how in the name of Mary, Jesus and Joseph he knew I’d been a soldier, let alone a serving one, a woman in a lab coat came in with coffee and gave it to The Prat, who thanked her by telling her that without her lipstick, her mouth looked too small.

Now at this point, any sane person would’ve walked out of that room and got on a train and then a ferry and kept going until they were at the other side of the world, but not me, apparently, because I’d seemed to have forgotten that there was an emergency exit behind me. 

So while Mike’s candidate for being my new neighbour raved on, I did my best to glare at Mike, and tell him telepathically that I was going to hang him from the window, but he didn’t get it, just smirked, like grievous bodily harm was funny.

And then, The Prat asked me how I felt about the violin, but I didn’t get to tell him where exactly he could put it, because he went on: “Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other. Wouldn’t you agree?”

I asked Mike then, very calmly, “You told him about me?” And kept the accusation out of my voice.

“Not a word,” he replied. He was still smirking.

So I asked Our All-Knowing Lord and Master who said anything about flatmates, and he told me he did, because he’d told Mike he had to be ‘a difficult man’ to find a flatmate for and Mike had come back from lunch with an old friend clearly just home from military service in Afghanistan and we’d meet at this flat in central London he had his eye on at seven o’clock the next night, and he had to go because he’d left his riding crop in the mortuary.

By that point, I was beginning to consider using my cane as a blunt instrument.

“Is that it?” I asked before he could get out.

“Is that what?” He looked at Mike as if Mike would save him.

“We just met and we’re going to go look at a flat.” I don’t know how I managed to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. 

Mike was looking as if his dreams were coming true.

“Problem?” OAKLaM asked.

I lost it then. “We don't know a thing about each other! I don’t know you. I don’t know even know your name or where we’re meeting and how in the name of Christ did you know I’ve been in Afghanistan?”

He got this odd look on his face that made me reconsider my hesitation to beat the stuffing out of him. “I know you’re an Army doctor and you’ve been invalided home from Afghanistan; I know you’ve got a brother who’s worried about you but you won’t go to him for help because you don’t approve of him – possibly because he’s an alcoholic, more likely because he recently walked out on his wife. And I know that your therapist thinks your limp’s psychosomatic, quite correctly, I’m afraid.” He breathed. “That’s enough to be going on with, don’t you think?”

Mike was about pissing himself laughing as OAKLaM walked out, but he stopped when he stuck his head back round the door.

“The name’s Sherlock Holmes and the address is 221b Baker Street,” he said, and then he WINKED and disappeared again, leaving me to wonder what in the hell I'd just been witness to.


	2. Nothing Happens To Me (part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I had another empty day, so decided to try part 2 of this. It was quite fun to write, and apparently people like reading it because it's had over 70 reads already.

Another reason to add to my defence was the hangover I had in the morning. You’d think that since alcoholism runs in the family, I’d be able to handle my liquor, but apparently I don’t have the gene which allows certain cousins and family members to wake up in the morning after drinking vodka and not feel like their head’s been cleaved in half, so when I was woken by one of my neighbours, my judgement was more than a little impaired.

Which was why my curiosity ran amok, and led me to the internet, and after making myself a strong coffee (with only a tiny hint of whisky in it) I settled down in front of Facebook intending to do some research on the weirdo Mike introduced me to at Bart’s. 

But OAKLaM didn’t have a Facebook page, or any other kind of social media account, so I sat about scratching my head for a good half hour wondering just how much of a weirdo he really was to not use social media while being the world’s foremost obnoxious tosser. 

Because tossers like him always have social media. They need it to post the opinions nobody wanted and to insult those unfortunate enough not to agree with them. And that’s reason #54286 for why I shouldn’t have gone to Baker Street.

Yet after doing a bit of contemplation, I decided to try Google. Which I’d sworn off before going to Afghanistan because Googling anybody would only end in chaos. But I did it. I googled Sherlock Holmes.

And I found a website called The Science of Deduction. Where OAKLaM claims to be... well, OAKLaM. Okay, technically he said he was a consulting detective, but that amounts to the same thing.

I was about to phone Mike and ask him why he’d thought setting me up with a tosser had been a good idea, when I remembered the text message said tosser had sent before going all psychic on me, but reading it didn’t really make me feel any better about sharing a flat with him.

If brother has green ladder, arrest brother. 

That’s what it said. 

Mike had the sense not to answer his phone to me, so I left a carefully worded message informing him of what would be getting done to what parts of his anatomy the next time I saw him, and left for the therapy session my Civilian Liaison Officer (’Call Me Jeff) had signed me up for. 

Ella Thompson wasn’t the worst therapist I could have got landed with, but I’d still been landed with her, and she was still a therapist and was taking notes and analysing me and taking notes and analysing me, and I had no intention of ‘opening up’ or telling her that I’d just met some guy she probably would’ve thought I’d imagined.

And I didn't need to tell her that I was curious as to whether the detective who arrested me for GBH had aged well like a fine wine or gone off like a mouldy piece of stilton, and had considered phoning him after consuming a bottle and a half of Vodka, so the forty minute session dragged on like a parliamentary debate.

Except nobody was doing any talking.

And I was thinking about Detective Lestrade. 

“How’s the blog going?” Ella asked after a decade. 

“Fine,” I said. 

At our first session, she’d suggested writing a blog. Because getting my feelings out in a positive way was better than keeping them in and letting them fester. Or something. I don’t know how she put it; I'd stopped listening. 

“You haven’t written a word, have you?” She saw right through me immediately. 

Maybe in another world, Ella and I would’ve gotten along quite well. I liked her no-bullshit attitude. 

“Nope.” I was quite happy to admit this. What did I need a blog for? Or therapy? It wasn’t going to make the nightmares go away. It wasn’t going to change anything, or make things better. 

Because I was a solider. With PTSD and a psychosomatic limp and a lot of scar tissue. And pretending I hadn’t seen people die, hadn’t heard their screams as they were shot or blown to hell, pretending that I could accept that and get over it, was a waste of time I could better spend on coming up with excuses to explain why I still have my service weapon.

Ella made a note then. I suspected she was going to get through a few of her notepads by the time this torture was over. “John,” she said when she was done, “you were a solider. You were in the army for eight years. Right now, your world’s in a tailspin. You’re home, you’re injured, and you have no idea where to turn. But listen to me when I tell you that writing a blog? It’ll help you.”

“What am I supposed to write about?” I didn’t like that she’d put the tail on the donkey on her first attempt. 

“Everything,” she told me. She seemed to be warming up, probably thinking that I was coming round to her way of thinking. “Anything that happens to you.”

I couldn’t have that. My parents had been great practitioners of the maxim “start as you mean to continue.”

“Nothing happens to me,” I said, and my session was over.


	3. Nothing Happens To Me (part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the reads!!

I didn’t like that idea. That nothing happens to me. Once upon a time, I’d had the nickname Five Continents Watson (which wasn’t true in the slightest, but I played it up and turned myself into a bit of a legend). I’d played rugby. Wanted to be a doctor. To work in a hospital and save lives. 

Then Irene sodding Adler came along. And my useless twat of a boyfriend cheated. And my sister came out as a lesbian and changed her name to Harry and our dear old dad had a heart attack at the Christmas party and Mum joined the church and told us that we’d both go to hell. 

And I almost got arrested for GBH. And then I slept, but not really, with the detective who’d come to arrest me. And then I decided I couldn’t stay in the same city as the ex-boyfriend with the surgically-removed testicles because I couldn’t trust myself not to do him some permanent damage and I didn’t really want to go to jail. 

So I joined the army. And got sent to Afghanistan. 

But none of that mattered now. Because it was over. It was all in the past and I didn’t even know if Detective Lestrade could still do that thing that made me incoherent. 

I wasn’t THE John Watson Mike remembered. I wasn’t Joanne, daughter of Margaret and Ian. Not the sister of Harriet. Not the thirteen year old who declared she wanted to be called John. Not the rugby captain or the girlfriend or the little green monster who’d reared its ugly head when it found its boyfriend in bed with somebody else. 

I was Captain John H. Watson, M.D. John Watson who’d spent eight years in a war, healing the sick and watching the dying die. 

And it bloody well sucked.

So yes, maybe it wasn’t the wisest choice in the history of humankind. Maybe I should have run away screaming the moment Sherlock Holmes told me who I was and where I’d been. But this new John Watson, retired army Captain and rugby player, did NOT like the prospect of being unemployed for the rest of her sodding life, sitting around Googling complete strangers, drinking vodka in the middle of the bloody day, going to therapy or meeting with Call-Me-Jeff who was just as much of a twat as Sherlock Holmes had been when we’d met.

And I didn’t want to ever want those words that I said to Ella Thompson to be true.

I wanted something to happen.


	4. Interrupted by the Inspector

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been a while, and I'm a horrible person, but writing a book wasn't as easy as I thought it would be and real life isn't fun and I haven't had the time to update this and I'm sorry.

If you’ve read this far, your patience is about to be rewarded. I didn’t start writing all this down to give you the opportunity to question my judgement, but to catalogue my journey down the rabbit hole into the world Sherlock Holmes occupied, and now I’m getting to that part.

I’ve already explained why my judgement was slightly impaired vis-a-vis Twatlock Holmes and the flat in central London, so we can move on from why me drinking vodka is a bad idea, and get on to the good stuff. 

Of which there is plenty. Well, technically it’s only good for a laugh, but I’ve given myself the task of writing all this down and I’m not about to give up now before I’ve even gotten to the bit where I got to Baker Street and found out how Sherlock Holmes had wangled himself a discount.

So after my therapy session with Ella, I moped around for a bit. I didn’t want to go back to my teeny little army flat with its damp walls. And my Browning L9A1. Because it had hit me all of a sudden how boring my life had become and I didn’t really want to be around a live firearm. 

But it was the middle of January, and it was cold, so I got to Baker Street before my new friend did, and I’d be lying if I said my jaw didn’t drop just a little.

221 was right in the middle of the city, and in a street filled with what I thought were Georgian-era buildings. The whole place was stunning, and I’d never in my life been able to afford anything in this part of London. 

I was planning out my excuses to give OAKLaM for why he’d have to struggle on without me, when a cab pulled up and he got out in the same big grey overcoat he’d been wearing the day before.

“Dr Watson,” he greeted, which made me do a double-take.

So he was pretending he was normal today.

“Mr Holmes.” I could play nice, too, and when he came over to shake my hand, I even smiled at him. Then it was time to get on with my revelation of how skint I was without actually admitting how skint I was. “Prime bit of real-estate,” I started.

“Yes,” OAKLaM agreed. “Mrs Hudson the landlady owes me a favour.”

“Oh?” I forgot all about my excuses.

He pressed the doorbell, doing this looking-off-into-the-distance thing which made me want to hit him and kiss him at the same time. “A few years ago, her husband got himself sentenced to death in Florida. I was able to help out.”

“Wait.” My brain suddenly processed what his words, having previously been preoccupied with imaging whether he’d still be able to do his OAKLaM thing while otherwise distracted. “You stopped her husband being executed?”

“Oh no,” he said as the door opened. “I ensured it.”

“Sherlock!” The landlady barely came up to his neck, but she threw her arms around him anyway and it wasn’t to throttle him. “Come in.”

He did, then stepped aside at the bottom of the stairs to let me hobble my way up first. The two flights almost made me reconsider sticking around to hear how much of a favour he was owed, but I was damned if I wasn’t curious about the flat, and maybe a little surprised that OAKLaM was capable of having some kind of relationship which didn’t involve physical violence.

After about a million years, I got to the second floor, and found myself confronted with four doors and another set of bloody stairs. I waited for OAKLaM, who opened the door closest to us, and he swept inside, leaving me to follow behind.

It was huge, surprisingly. And homely, despite the age of the place and the location. There was a hearth, with two armchairs sitting before it on a big red rug. And a green couch against the far wall, and there was even a table situated between the two front windows, and the kitchen behind me didn’t look like a fire hazard.

“It’s nice,” I said eventually. Another lesson learned from my parents was that when viewing potential living spaces, never let your positive emotions show or the price goes shooting upwards. And it wasn’t too hard keeping my relief from showing because there were boxes everywhere. “Well, it’ll be better as soon as we get all this stuff cleared up.”

OAKLaM got this odd look on his face, which was different from the other odd look he’d had before he told me who I was. “Of course I can tidy some of it up before you bring your things in,” he said, and started with a bundle of envelopes which he took over to the mantelpiece and stuck in place with a switch-blade.

That’s when I noticed the human skull. 

“Friend of mine,” OAKLaM said, when he realised I was staring at it. “Well, when I say friend...”

“Sherlock.” Mrs Hudson joined us then, and tutted as she looked round the room. “Look at the state of the place.”

I turned to glare at OAKLaM, who quickly pretended that there was stuff over by the window much more interesting, leaving me to glare at his back instead.

If he’d already moved in, he was either ridiculously confident that I’d accept the place, or could afford it well enough on his own, and as I paid more attention to his suit and that great bloody jacket, it occurred to me for the first time that maybe there was something wrong with him.

Something more than being able to look at someone and tell them their whole life story. Because why would he choose to have a flatmate if he was in a position to buy the whole building?

“What do you think then, Dr Watson?” Mrs Hudson asked. I did another quick look around the flat, but aside from the man in the corner, I couldn’t really find anything wrong with it. “There’s another bedroom upstairs, if you’ll be needing the two.”

This time, I really did glare at OAKLaM. What the hell had he been saying about me? And why did this landlady think I wasn’t just here for the flat?

“Of course we’ll be needing two,” I said, because OAKLaM still wasn’t looking at me. 

“Oh don’t worry about it,” Mrs Hudson told me. “You get all sorts round here.” Then she lowered her tone. “Mrs Turner next door’s got three of them- what do you call them again, Sherlock? Swingers?”

SWINGERS?

I realised I was doing my goldfish impression again. 

Mrs Hudson patted my arm and disappeared into the kitchen, and I decided now was as good a time as any to sit down before I collapsed.

The red armchair was surprisingly comfy, and if it weren’t for the two new acquaintances I’d just made, I’d have probably been able to fall asleep in it.

“I found your website,” I said as OAKLaM located his laptop under the couch cushions. “The Science of Deduction?”

“Oh?” He was pretending not to care, but he wasn’t doing a very good job at it.

I just gave him a look, certain that if he were as observant as he claimed, he’d be able to extract the ‘what kind of gullible twat do you take me for?’ subtext from it on his own. 

To my surprise, he looked slightly offended that I wasn’t lighting candles and kissing his feet.

“You said you could identify a software designer by his tie, and an airline pilot by his left thumb,” I reminded him. 

"Yes, and I can read your military career in your leg and your face, and your brother’s drinking habits through your mobile phone.” He turned away again. “And I know you’re more interested than you’re letting on.”

“You-” I started, but Mrs Hudson was back, this time brandishing a newspaper.

“What do you think of these suicides then, Sherlock?” She asked. “I thought they’d be right up your street. Three exactly the same.”

“Four,” OAKLaM said. “There’s been a fourth.”

This declaration was followed by the slamming of a car door out on the street, the front door downstairs being opened and shut again, and then someone running up the stairs.

If I hadn’t already been sitting down, I would’ve ended up on the floor when Detective Lestrade walked in.

“Where?” OAKLaM asked, not bothering with pleasantries. But then again, maybe it was just me who was struggling to form a coherent thought.

“Brixton,” Lestrade said. “Lauriston Gardens.” 

“What’s different? You wouldn’t have come to get me if there wasn’t something different.” 

Apparently not even the police were safe from being reminded of OAKLaM’s otherworldly powers of observation.

“This one left a note.” Lestrade did a double take when he finally noticed me, and it took him a few seconds to recover. “Will you come?”

I thought that was a bit of a personal question to be asking when there was an audience, but then I remembered he’d come here to consult The Oracle.

“Who’s on Forensics?” OAKLaM asked.

“Anderson.”

OAKLaM made a face. “Anderson won’t work with me.”

“Well, he won’t be your assistant.”

“I need an assistant.”

Lestrade didn’t answer straight away, and I realised he was counting backwards from ten. So it wasn’t just me who felt the need to resort to violence around Sherlock Holmes.

“Will you come?” He asked again when he was done.

OAKLaM made him wait. “Not in a police car. I’ll be right behind.”

“Thanks.” Lestrade looked at me again before disappearing, and I was trying to remember if I still had his mobile number from the last time we talked when Sherlock Holmes started jumping around, going on about it being Christmas because three people had killed themselves and now another one had left a note.

And I made a mental note to pay Mike Stamford a visit the next time I passed Bart’s hospital.


End file.
